I went up to New Haven today for the CORD rally and saw Wyclef rock a crowd of workers for the third time in less than two years. This time he gave us a little Fu-Gee-La to go with our "Ready Or Not." He also played a reggaefied, Freddie McGregor-esque "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." I kept shouting out "Levin's" door when appropriate, but it didn't catch on. Also they played the Sharon Jones record on the PA while we were waiting for Wyclef to come on stage, which was awesome. And the Nation Drill Squad was in the house and on stage with Wyclef, which brought back fond memories of watching them "fly" around the corners during the March 3, 2003 community march to tear down Yale's walls. The whole thing today took place on the empty lot at the end of the route 34 connector, right next to Career high school, in a big pile of dust. The location was thus appropriately symbolic of the past consequences of Yale's imperial expansion in the city.
The hospital campaign is so crucial and so inspiring, for all that New Haveners have already won and for all the victories yet to come. And it was really great to see Grrr for the first time since i moved out of the apartment a year ago, and great to see Justin and Autumn. (And Emily, Thomas, Lauren, Amelia, Matt, and a crapload of GESO and 34 and 35 and 1199 and CCNE people.) Congratulations to all the folks who are graduating this weekend.
I finally finished There Ain't No Black In The Union Jack on the train today. It's an interesting book, even more than a decade and a half after it was published and some two decades after many of the events and social movements Gilroy analyzes rtranspired. There are moments when Gilroy as music scholar is absolutely incredible - see the chapter on Diaspora, Utopia, and the critique of capitalism, and his reading of Culture Smiley and comments about Gordon Sumner and his band of appropriators and on Eric Clapton's admiration for English anti-immigrant racist Enoch "rivers of blood" Powell - and moments when he is less convincing - lumping Madness in with Bad Manners as a racist expropriation of Ska for white folks (I'll buy it from Buster Bloodvessel&co., but Madness's debt to Prince Buster was more than publicly acknowledged -- not only did they name their band after and cover one of his songs, they also wrote a song ("The Prince") in an explicit tribute to the ex-bodyguard turned Jamaican popular music legend. I also have written elsewhere about my disagreement with Gilroy's overly simplistic dismissal of KRS-ONE's BDP-era ouevre as "self-conscious racial pedagogy." I'd also like to post something looking at the rationale by which he arrives at his conclusions about how we need to rework undertandings of the role of class in social movements, though i have no idea when i will be able to get around to this. I'm about fifteen pages into George Yudice's (how do you do accents on blogger?) The Expediency of Culture and i'm finding it provocative and intriguing thus far.
Music:
Prince Buster: "Shaking Up Orange Street" - should be the soundtrack for all New Haven mobilizations. I don't care if it's actually about his studio in Kingston.
McFadden & Whitehead - "Ain't No Stopping Us Now" - because Boogie Nights was on TV tonight and this song is somewhat germane.
happy birthday Lauren
Saturday, May 21, 2005
For some reason, i always beleive that every Bruce Springsteen song I've never heard will sound like some musical cognate of or homage to The Clash's "The Card Cheat." Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris? Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior. Ok, maybe "excrucior" is way, way, too strong. It's Catullus, though, and the dude was the biggest drama queen since, like, Dido. [And by Dido i mean the queen of Carthage, not the British chanteuse.]
Friday, May 20, 2005
This entry comes straight from the Schomburg (delayed a few hours for lack of an internet collection) while I await a new box to sift through. There are a lot of things that make the Schomburg an infinitely cooler library than, oh, the Beinecke or even SML Manuscripts and Archives. The only thing Sterling has going for it is that you bump into federation and UOC people everywhere. That’s it. Manuscripts and archives also has some great stuff on strikes of yesteryear, icluding a pretty awesome button collection from 1984, and the entirety of the Donahue transcript, which I’ll probably blog someday, but it, like the Beinecke, is private and restricted to most people on the planet – although both are paradoxically more public than almost any other space on the Yale campus, vaults and all. What I really hate about the Beinecke though is how obnoxious this one guy who works there was to me last year, right before they fucked up my photocopy order and helpd me condemn myself to a very dismal winter break fretting over my ability to get a term paper done that should have been presented to a class a month earlier. Though most of that was my fault. And I never should have taken five seminars in one semester.
The Schomburg’s cool because it’s much more responsive to and integrated into the city and the neighborhood: there’s an exhibit on Malcom X right now and all these court sketches from the assassination trial are hanging from the exhibition space in the Manuscript room and as I’m sifting through the St. Clair Drake papers, people of all ages – senior citizens, school groups, families -- are just wandering around and looking at the exhibit, and it makes sitting in the same place for hours on end sooo much more tolerable than in the dank basement microfilm room or the Beinecke panopticon. Yesterday, there was an adorable baby who was making a lot of baby noise, and it kicked ass. All archives should have babies in them. Thus spake Zachathustra.
The Schomburg’s cool because it’s much more responsive to and integrated into the city and the neighborhood: there’s an exhibit on Malcom X right now and all these court sketches from the assassination trial are hanging from the exhibition space in the Manuscript room and as I’m sifting through the St. Clair Drake papers, people of all ages – senior citizens, school groups, families -- are just wandering around and looking at the exhibit, and it makes sitting in the same place for hours on end sooo much more tolerable than in the dank basement microfilm room or the Beinecke panopticon. Yesterday, there was an adorable baby who was making a lot of baby noise, and it kicked ass. All archives should have babies in them. Thus spake Zachathustra.
boycotts work (LA Times)
Hotels Break Ranks On Union Contract
One signs a deal while the general manager of another urges surrender on expiration date issue.
By Nancy Cleeland
Times Staff Writer
May 20, 2005
A coalition of prominent Los Angeles hotels has suffered a double blow in its yearlong power struggle with the hotel workers' union, as two of nine original members publicly broke ranks on the crucial issue of the contract expiration date.
The Unite Here union is demanding that the contract end in 2006 as part of a campaign to line up expiration dates across the country. That could allow the union to call a national strike as it goes up against national chains, leaders said.
The expiration date has been the key point of contention between the two sides, with the Los Angeles Hotel Employer's Council pushing for a longer deal.
The latest hit to the council came Thursday, when Unite Here officials said they had signed a 2006 deal with the newly renamed Sheraton Los Angeles. The former Hyatt Regency was a council member until it changed ownership this week.
Like pacts recently signed between the union and six independent hotels that are not part of the coalition, the Sheraton Los Angeles contract calls for modest wage increases and a continuation of family health benefits.
More surprising was a plea for surrender sent out by Wilshire Grand General Manager John Stoddard, once a strident opponent of the union. His May 12 letter to fellow council members, obtained by the union and released Thursday, calls for capitulation on the expiration date for the sake of the local economy.
One signs a deal while the general manager of another urges surrender on expiration date issue.
By Nancy Cleeland
Times Staff Writer
May 20, 2005
A coalition of prominent Los Angeles hotels has suffered a double blow in its yearlong power struggle with the hotel workers' union, as two of nine original members publicly broke ranks on the crucial issue of the contract expiration date.
The Unite Here union is demanding that the contract end in 2006 as part of a campaign to line up expiration dates across the country. That could allow the union to call a national strike as it goes up against national chains, leaders said.
The expiration date has been the key point of contention between the two sides, with the Los Angeles Hotel Employer's Council pushing for a longer deal.
The latest hit to the council came Thursday, when Unite Here officials said they had signed a 2006 deal with the newly renamed Sheraton Los Angeles. The former Hyatt Regency was a council member until it changed ownership this week.
Like pacts recently signed between the union and six independent hotels that are not part of the coalition, the Sheraton Los Angeles contract calls for modest wage increases and a continuation of family health benefits.
More surprising was a plea for surrender sent out by Wilshire Grand General Manager John Stoddard, once a strident opponent of the union. His May 12 letter to fellow council members, obtained by the union and released Thursday, calls for capitulation on the expiration date for the sake of the local economy.